Sundance film ‘DOPE’ produced by Forrest Whitaker and Pharrell finds is a hit

DOPE which premiered this past Friday, June 19 reeled in $6.5 million, which is impressive for an independent film being released during blockbuster season. The film has received rave reviews across the board. DOPE, directed by Rick Famuyiwa, tells the story of Malcolm (Shameik Moore) who is carefully surviving life in a tough neighborhood in Los Angeles. A chance invitation to an underground party leads him into an adventure that could allow him to go from being a geek, to being dope, to ultimately being himself. It’s a kind of “coming of age” or “geek boy becomes a geek man” story that is usually reserved for white kids, so the racially diverse cast stands out in a relatively lilly-white summer.Dope is a comedy with an undercurrent of sociopolitical awareness that rarely exists in popular teen romps. Moore did an excellent job and stated in an interview with billboard that “the movie gives a different perspective on the black community” and that “the characters aren’t going out and shooting people and trying to act hard — they just want to go to school. They’re regular kids. Juice kind of makes you like Tupac more as the thug, but I don’t want people to leave Dopeliking me for pulling a gun.”

The hip hop inspired film also boasts strong performances from young entertainers such as rapper A$AP rocky, model Chanel Iman, and actress Zoe Kravitz. Rocky — who landed a supporting role in Dope after helping his then-girlfriend, model Chanel Iman, practice her lines — does pull guns, ­however. “It’s very cliched: I play a drug dealer, a thug with an elegant, intelligent side,” says the rapper, 26. “He’s one of those guys that’s just a ­product of his own environment. I can connect to him in so many different ways, being a guy who once had that kind of lifestyle. I gravitated to [Dope] instantly. It’s a hood classic — we haven’t had one of those in decades.”

Indeed, Dope‘s recipe of violence, retro music and fashion, and a sun-baked inner-city Los Angeles landscape makes associations with “hood classics” likeBoyz N the Hood and Menace II Society inevitable — and intentional: Famuyiwa explains that he used such cinematic references as points of departure. “I wanted to use the ­common ­language and history that we have of those ­movies, but subvert them,” he says. “I wanted to use that to put a mirror to our own expectations.”One way Dope does that is by filtering those old inner-city tropes through an extremely of-the-moment, 2015 lens.